Damage Control

The Shrub has dispatched Condi, aptly named after my girlfriend's aunt's cat, to Europe to control the damage caused by the revelation that the American Gulag system extends onto Eurozone soil. The Republicans are promising to answer the questions as forthrightly and honestly as possible, Bush-speak for lie, misdirect, misinform. The European Union, rightly so, has indicated it will sanction any member caught supporting U. S. secret prison - read human rights violations. Several European contries are complaining that their airports were used in rendition flights, read flights of prisoners of CIA interest to places where torture is legal, not merely being debated. While it would be interesting to hear what Condi really has to say, I'm sure we'll never know unless some European country has the wherewithal to reveal what we already know: The Bush administration tortures prisoners in secret jails.

Further damage control is required to justify the Shrub's claims that we're winning the war on terrorism. Aside from the debacle that is Iraq, the Congressional Research Service reported to Congress on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, that the yardsticks the Shrub's minions use to gauge progress in the War on Terror are mostly a few inches off - namely, useless. Of some interest is that the report was issued on Friday after Thanksgiving. A common tactic in Washington is to issue bad news on Friday afternoon to lessen its impact. Releasing it on Friday afternoon after Thanksgiving pretty much guaranteed no one would know about it. Thanks to the attentive folks at Reuters, we know about another Bush misinformation campaign, measurement of progress using defective measurements. The inventor of the phrase "fuzzy math" (an outflow of an inadequately pursued Ivy League education, perhaps, one wasted on booze and cocaine?) uses numbers instead of meaning, the study states. Interesting, given the fact that figures lie and liars figure. The study indicated that it was hard to see if and in what cases progress has been made. Pretty much contradicts the oft-repeated we're winning the war on terror.

Further damage control: Twenty percent of the criminal investigations of U. S. Congressmen are against Democrats! Horrors! Furthering the numeric theme, the percentage of one investigation against the Bush administration resulting in indictment of an Administration official: one hundred. The percentage of the seven investigations into the Clintons' conduct that resulted in indictment of an Administration official: zero. So, mathematically, the Clinton administration was infinitely less criminal than the Bush administration.

Numbers are such wonderful things! You can torture them into saying anything. Reminds me of a CIA interrogation. Waterboarding, anyone?